Having a strong interest in technology and wanting to be informed of all the latest advances and gadgets, I always try to attend CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada. I hope you caught my post about it on my Instagram page @MarthStewart48 - we had so much fun!
This year, I attended the multi-day trade event as Samsung’s special guest. We did an incredible demo in their very high-tech kitchen at the Samsung booth showcasing SmartThings, the company's innovative new products collection using on-device AI and intelligent integration. It is their connected ecosystem developed to make life easier at home. CMO of Samsung North America, Allison Stransky, introduced me. And then, our own Kevin Sharkey and Thomas Joseph, joined me to show how to make the perfect smashed baked potato - the same way we do it at my restaurant, The Bedford by Martha Stewart. We showed Samsung’s AI-enabled Family Hub+ Refrigerator which helps determine if all the ingredients for a specific recipe are ready using its AI Vision Inside. When it’s time to start cooking, SmartThings knows to connect the fridge to the connected oven & start pre-heating. Then SmartThings on the Samsung TV gives an alert when the food is done. We also made Marthatinis - the perfect drink with my smashed baked potato. And I tried Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 6. In all, it was a great event and demo. My favorite phrase “it’s a good thing” may now become “it’s a SmartThing” after this latest CES visit. Be sure to click on this highlighted link to watch the video! You'll love it. And, be sure to follow Samsung on Instagram @SamsungUS to learn more about their innovative products.
Here are a few photos. I will share more images from this fascinating event in my next blog. Stay tuned.
Samsung has a very large presence at this year’s CES 2024 event. It was great to attend this show as Samsung’s special guest. CES 2024 runs through today. The event is expected to bring about 130,000 attendees and more than 4,000 exhibitors to Las Vegas.
Samsung features lots of great innovations including their SmarthThings, which allows users to connect, monitor, and control multiple smart home devices quickly and easily.
Here I am with President and CEO of Samsung Electronics North America KS Choi.
And here I am with Thomas Joseph, our Culinary EVP, and Kevin Sharkey, EVP Executive Director of Design. We’re drinking my famous Marthatinis.
It's always so great to start off the new year eating healthy, delicious, organic greens.
My large half-acre outdoor vegetable garden is cleared, cleaned and put to bed for the winter season, but I'm fortunate to have lots of wonderful vegetables thriving indoors, in a special greenhouse located behind my Equipment Barn.
Here are some photos of what we have growing, enjoy.
This entire greenhouse is almost all glass. Most of the energy comes from the sun through giant windows, which can be programmed to open for ventilation or cooling when needed. This photo was taken this week just before a night of heavy rains.
We built 16 of these wooden garden boxes to fit the entire length and width of the space. Raised bed gardening allows good drainage, prevents soil compaction, and provides protection for those plants that may otherwise get trampled.
The beds are well-marked to indicate watering instructions.
These reminders are also laminated, so they don’t get wet during watering sessions – a helpful and time saving tip.
This structure uses minimal artificial heat, where many cold hardy crops, such as root vegetables and brassicas, can be grown and harvested through the winter months. I also installed grow lights specially designed to substitute natural sunlight, stimulating photosynthesis, and provide the right color spectrum for thriving plants.
This house is also equipped with fans for proper air circulation when needed.
Cilantro, Coriandrum sativum, is also known commonly as coriander or Chinese parsley. Coriander is actually the dried seed of cilantro. Cilantro is a popular micro-green garnish that complements meat, fish, poultry, noodle dishes, and soups. Everyone here at the farm loves the cilantro, but some don’t. Do you know… some even say it tastes like soap? For those, the issue is genetic. These people have a variation in a group of olfactory-receptor genes that allows them to strongly perceive the soapy-flavored aldehydes in cilantro leaves. Among those who strongly dislike cilantro – the late Chef Julia Child.
All my plants are grown organically and have no chemical taste at all. This is the celery – also great for my daily green juice. Celery is part of the Apiaceae family, which includes carrots, parsnips, parsley, and celeriac.
Here’s our parsley. Parsley is a flowering plant native to the Mediterranean. It derives its name from the Greek word meaning “rock celery.”
This parsley has round, curly leaves. In general, it is less robust in taste than the flat-leaf varieties.
This is our bed of arugula. Arugula leaves, also known as rocket or roquette, are tender and bite-sized with a tangy flavor. All our vegetables are planted at different times as part of succession planting, a practice of seeding crops at intervals of seven to 21 days in order to maintain a consistent supply of harvestable produce throughout the season. I am a big fan of succession planting. This dramatically increases a garden’s yield, while also improving produce quality.
The radish is an edible root vegetable of the Brassicaceae family. Radishes are grown and consumed throughout the world, and mostly eaten raw as a crunchy salad vegetable.
Radish greens are the edible tops of the radish plant, and are commonly eaten as a vegetable in Korea and China.
These are the leaves of beets. Beets are sweet and tender – and one of the healthiest foods. Beets contain a unique source of phytonutrients called betalains, which provide antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and detoxification support.
And these are the bold red beet stalks. Beetroot stalks are edible and can be eaten raw or cooked.
These are the leaves of turnips. The vegetables are not ready yet, but when harvesting, I always gently remove the surrounding earth first to see if the vegetables are big enough. If not, I push the soil back into place. Turnips are smooth flat, round and white vegetables that mature early and are best harvested young – when they are up to two inches in diameter. The flavor is sweet and fruity, and the texture is crisp and tender. Both the root and the leaves of the turnip are edible. The leaves have a taste similar to mustard greens but with a less intense spicy flavor.
Lettuce always grows so well in this greenhouse. These need to grow a little bit more before harvesting. It’s a real treat to have lettuce like this all year long.
I always grow lots of varieties of lettuce, so I can share them with my daughter and her children.
One cannot miss the gorgeous Swiss chard stalk colors. They are so vibrant with stems of yellow, red, rose, gold, and white. Chard has very nutritious leaves making it a popular addition to healthful diets.
The most common method for picking is to cut off the outer leaves about two inches above the ground while they are young, tender, and about eight to 12 inches long.
In the next bed, our kale. Kale is related to cruciferous vegetables like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, collard greens, and Brussels sprouts. There are many different types of kale – the leaves can be green or purple in color, and have either smooth or curly shapes.
I use spinach for my daily green juice. Spinach is an excellent source of vitamin K, vitamin A, vitamin C, folate, and a good source of manganese, magnesium, iron and vitamin B2.
Basil, also called great basil, is a culinary herb of the family Lamiaceae. It is a tender plant, and is used in cuisines worldwide – in sauces and soups, on pizza and pasta, in salads, sandwiches, and a host of other dishes.
I am so pleased with my vegetable greenhouse and how productive it is every year. We’re looking forward to a winter filled with bountiful harvests.
It's always so much fun to see photos from others taken during their vacations.
Not long ago, a member of my outdoor grounds crew, Pasang Sherpa, returned from a trip to his native Nepal. Nepal is a landlocked nation located between India and the autonomous region of China known as Tibet. Sherpas live in the most mountainous areas of Nepal, high in the Himalayas. They are renowned in the international climbing and mountaineering community for their hardiness, expertise, and experience at very high altitudes. It is quite a distance from here, but Pasang tries to go back regularly to visit relatives and friends, and to enjoy the many beautiful sights and delicious foods of his homeland.
Enjoy these photos.
If you are not familiar with Nepal, it is the country of Mount Everest, the highest mountain peak in the world, and the birthplace of Gautama Buddha- Lumbini. Several of my outdoor grounds crew are from Nepal and love to go back whenever they can.
Many of you may recognize Pasang from this blog. He is our resident tree expert here at my farm. Here he is at the airport in Nepal getting picked up by his nephew and his wife’s brother.
Boudhanath is a stupa in Kathmandu, Nepal. In Buddhism, a stupa is a mound-like or hemispherical structure containing relics that is used as a place of meditation. This stupa is one of the largest spherical stupas in Nepal and the world.
One of the first things Pasang did when he got to Nepal was enjoy a nice dinner with his friends.
While it rarely snows in the lowlands of Nepal, there is snow up on the mountains. Pasang took this photo of the snowcapped Numbur, a glaciated mountain located in the Rolwaling Himal mountain range. Winter in Nepal occurs at the same time as here – December, January and February. The lower elevations are very dry and cold.
When Pasang was small, he went to school in Nunthala, Sholukhumbu, nestled in the serene landscapes of rural Nepal.
Nepal generates more than 95-percent of its electricity from hydropower. Hydropower, also known as water power, is the use of falling or fast-running water to produce electricity or to power machines. This station was just opened less than two years ago.
This waterfall feeds the hydropower station.
This is Taksindu, a ward in Solukhumbu District in the Province 1 of north-eastern Nepal. It is a small village with a population less than three-thousand.
In this photo is the Taksindu Monastery, a Sherpa Buddhist monastery which sits on the cusp of the divide between Solu and Khumbu, Nepal. It is
a residential school for 60 monks and nuns and 20 lay people,
and is the primary religious institution for the surrounding community.
These are just two of the young students.
And these are some of the young graduates of the monastery who will go on to dedicate their lives to serving other people or leave mainstream society and live life in prayer and contemplation.
At the top of the Taksindu Pass is this temple, Taksindu La.
Pasang took photos up close and from away to show the picturesque views of the Khumbu region.
Here is another snapshot of Taksindu La before Pasang went inside.
And here is Pasang with his nephew’s wife. Although he traveled alone on this trip, Pasang was able to see many relatives and family friends.
And this is Pasang’s mother, Kanchhe Sherpa. She is placing flower petals in dishes of water outside the monastery for the Buddha. Flowers symbolize the Six Paramitas: giving, abiding by the precepts, patience, diligence, concentration, and wisdom.
Pasang also visited the Nepali hospital where his son was born. This is the Phaplu Hospital located in Solukhumbu. It was originally built in 1975 to provide medical services to the densely populated area. Pasang says he is happy to see how it has evolved and improved over the years.
From Phaplu, Pasang could see Numbur. Here is another view of the Numbur mountain, which is 22,828 feet high.
This photo was taken during Pasang’s early morning Pikey Peak trek. This trail is in the lower Everest region known as Solu Khumbu. From the summit, which is at an altitude of 4065 meters, or 2.5 miles up, there is a magnificent view.
Pasang was so happy to get these photos. This one was taken at about 6am.
He also saw yaks and naks. Yaks are also known as tartary ox, grunting ox, or hairy cattle. It is a species of long-haired domesticated cattle found throughout the Himalayan region of South Asia, the Tibetan Plateau, Kashmir, Tajikistan, and as far north as Mongolia and Siberia. The female is called a nak.
And here is Pasang with his friend, Temba. Pasang spent about three weeks in his homeland, but is already looking forward to his next trip. Thanks Pasang, for sharing your photos.
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